


Black Eyes

by orphan_account



Series: The Telepath's Immortal [5]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alternative Universe - Telepathy, Angst, Hurt Ianto Jones, Jack Has Issues, Jack Worrying That He Isn't Good Enough For Ianto In His Own Special Way, Jack being Jack, M/M, Mind Control, Pining, Post-Episode: s01e04 Cyberwoman, Telepath Ianto, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-17 08:41:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10590429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Suddenly, a tug in Ianto’s gut had him stumbling forward as if something were controlling him. Staggering into the kitchen, Ianto was met with what could have been the most wonderful sight had it not been for the young woman’s fully black eyes.Lisa smiled twistedly, her midnight glare hardening until Ianto couldn't keep his own eyes open.When he awoke, really truly awoke, he was lying in Owen's bed, with a sleeping Jack collapsed on a chair beside him and Lisa's blood staining his quivering fingers.





	1. Lisa Hallet Was Sweet (Until She Wasn't So Sweet)

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to experiment with shorter chapters, but more chapters, to see how it works out. It's easier to read, I think and it takes less time to get updates, you just get them a bit shorter. Tell me what you think if you hate it though, I just wanted to test it out. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy, thank you for all the sweet comments and kudos you've been leaving <3
> 
> (Also, in case it wasn't obviously, the normal text is the present and the italics are Ianto having flashbacks of the past - which are all events that sort of happen in the time of the episode Cyberwoman)

“When will you let me see him?”

“I don’t know, Jack. I don’t know if you should even see him ever. You ordered him to kill one of his friends. Someone who understood him before Torchwood Three and understood Canary Wharf. Do you know how damaging it could be for him to see you?”

Ianto curled up, covering his ears to try and block out Toshiko’s exhausted words. The bed underneath him was soft and smelled warm and distinctly red - when Ianto was so out of it, so very tired after using so much of his magic, his senses became mixed up. He couldn’t percept voices properly either; Toshiko’s was a simple, clean tepidness against his temples whereas Jack’s was a far too hot rhythm that slowly caressed his middle. It could have been pleasant, had his entire body not felt bruised and aching.

A sweltering cloth was pressed calmingly against his forehead and Ianto realised suddenly that he had been whimpering high-pitchedly for a few moments. Owen patted him awkwardly on the shoulder, but as the Welshman berated him gently, Ianto knew that he must have been looking after him for a while.

How long had he been out? How long had it been since Jack ordered him to kill Lisa? How long had it been since he had actually done it?

_Ianto had stayed with Toshiko for another three days before he returned home. He craved his own soft bed and his massive stock of coffee and the stray cat that sometimes slunk in through his windows or ajar doorways in search of the cat food he kept specially for her._

_Knowing this, it was understandable that Ianto called out ‘Trico’ (what he had christened the runty, grey-blue feline) when he heard harsh scraping from his kitchen after he stiffly unlocked the door. His head still pounded, as it had been for a while, and his movements were heavy and languid._

_There was a significant lack of skittering claws or plaintive, needy meows, but Ianto wasn’t in his right frame of mind. He wished he had grabbed at the pistol he stored by the cabinet by the door for these types of situations, looking back on it, but he didn’t and it had caused so many problems._

_Suddenly, a tug in Ianto’s gut had him stumbling forward, as if something were controlling him. Staggering into the kitchen, Ianto was met with what could have been the most wonderful sight had it not been for the young woman’s fully black eyes._

“Look, I understand how you feel about me seeing him,” Jack said, “but I know that you know that I care about him, very much-”

“You never show it, Jack! Surely you’re even a tiny bit aware of how you value everyone more than Ianto. All you’ve ever tried to use him for is bloody tea, despite him being a trained field agent. In fact, he probably has more time in the field than any of us, having been in Torchwood One for so very long-”

“Don’t remind me that he had to be there, don’t,” Jack argued back, and they continued along a cycle or interruption and white-hot anger at each other before they were both disturbed by a grim, strident moaning from the room behind them.

Jack swallowed thickly, feeling annoyingly vulnerable even though it was Ianto curled up, defenseless on a bed that Jack wasn’t fretting besides. It both upset and satisfied him that he cared so much (despite the fact that he never truly showed it to the young telepath) about Ianto to be devoting so much of his time and emotions to him.

But...it was true, everything that Tosh told him. And because of it, did Jack even deserve Ianto? ‘Honestly,’ Jack mused affectionately, but sorrowfully, ‘would anyone deserve Ianto?’ It was one of the first times Jack had even halfway admitted his feelings for the beautiful - in body and soul - Archiver.

Smiling sadly, he asked the tech tenderly, “You’ll look after him? Tell him that I’ve been around? I- I...When he wakes up, will you at least tell me?”

Slowly, Toshiko nodded, her arms unfolding from their tightly tensed position. Tentatively, she reached out to pull Jack into an awkward hug that they truly both needed. The weight of Ianto’s ailments was heavy on their shoulders. “ Tell him. Please. Just ask him out on a date or-or...something, give him something because he wants you so very badly too…”

“You and I both know that I won’t do that, Toshiko.”

_Lisa had been his only friend when he was recruited - well, Yvonne Hartman might as well had called him a slave for everything that she did to him - into Torchwood One. She was Gifted, like him, and had been working for Torchwood for three months before they found out both of their secrets._

_They were taken into surgery, after being heavily sedated; Ianto still had injection scars from how much he had fought. Once they finally were lifted from their stasis, they had matching ‘necklaces’, or collars, if you would, that were fused into their skin. Incorporated into the design of the band of leather-plastic-alien material was a telepathic technology that Ianto was unfamiliar with. But it didn’t matter where it originated from, Torchwood One never cared about that._

_‘If it's alien, it's ours.’_

_The bands were safety precautions, only used if it was entirely necessarily, Yvonne had assured him. If they were activated, they would send a biting volt of elemental energy into their brains; Ianto and Lisa would be comatose, completely cut off from their Gifts. A little button in Hartman’s office, a surprisingly tiny thing for all that it could do to anyone for was Gifted._

_When the Cybermen and the Daleks invaded at the Battle of Canary Wharf, every safety protocol triggered. Including the bands around Ianto and Lisa’s necks._

_By the time Ianto came to, he was surrounded by dead bodies and Lisa was nowhere to be found._

 

* * *

 

Owen emerged with a sigh into the living room, his eyes sunken and tired. In lieu of greeting, Jack asked with his eyes and a forceful movement forwards (aborted by Toshiko’s small hand) how Ianto was. “Surely someone should be staying with him,” the captain muttered to Tosh, but she smiled gently and shook her head. Owen beat her to a response.

“Ianto is asleep and will stay that way for an indefinite amount of time. It’s been the same cycle for the past week and there’s no symptoms of anything I could diagnose. But, he is sick and all that could be good for him is rest and a little bit of TLC that I’m sure Tosh and you can provide once he is awake.”

Collapsing heavily into the armchair besides Tosh, Owen crossed his legs lazily over one another, turning to contemplate the pair. “I know I’m not exactly Ianto’s best friend, nor am I the most in tune with other people’s emotions, but even I can tell that you both like each other. And I can also tell that you don’t at all deserve him. You’re so possessive of him, you don’t want him to be with anyone but you run around after Gwen and only show your affections when he can’t hear or see it.”

Jack averted his gaze guiltily, unused to being called out on what he was doing wrong. An unpleasant stirring in his chest pained him for a second and Jack prepared mentally to speak - this was something he couldn’t fuck up. Ianto meant so much to all of them, even if it was surprising to see Owen so protective of the budding telepath.

“Ho-How do I make him feel better? How do I get him to understand that I care about him? What is even the point if all I’ll end up doing is hurting him?”

Owen rolled his eyes, rubbing a hand over his exhausted features. Sparing a glance at Toshiko to almost ask for permission first, before throwing himself into the conversation once more. His words were biting and angry and they had more than enough reason to be; Jack refused to try with Ianto for fear of losing him, which made no sense to him.

“Every relationship has their ups and downs. But if you truly cared about Ianto, you’d treasure even the possibility of a few months or years with him.”

_When Lisa started controlling him, Ianto was barely aware of his own actions. He could sense colours and sounds and abstract versions of feelings, but when he came home from a day of running Lisa’s pointless errands (mainly so that she could practice authorising his movements) he couldn’t remember what he had done properly._

_She wasn’t exactly Lisa; she’d been infected, of sorts, by dark elemental energy. When the bands around their necks were activated, Lisa’s mind had become weakened and susceptible to attacks from rogue_ Gifteds _. One, although Ianto still had no idea_ who, _had stolen her brain and taken it as their own. They controlled and took over Lisa until she no longer could be Lisa._

_So when Ianto staggered into the Hub just before the end of his medical leave, a gun in his hand and an order to take over in whichever way he knew, he couldn’t exactly blame his old friend._

_The reaction was instantaneous - Gwen was shouting, screaming at Jack to do something, anything. Sudden reads of fear and hope (hope that_ finally _Jack would see Ianto as the villain in her stupid little fairytale) stunned Ianto for a moment and he groaned in pain. Tosh stood, her chair falling backwards behind her. Owen joined her, shocked, confused, but surprisingly unscared._

_They still trusted him._

_The next few moments passed like a blur that Ianto couldn’t follow at all with his addled brain. Shaking sounds, as the Hub was rattled on it’s building_ frame _, followed by smashing as glasses and other miscellaneous fell onto the ground, crackling static as computers fizzed out of life._

_Ianto felt a hard, unforgivingly rough hand grab him by the back of the neck, pulling him backwards from the path of a quickly descending thatch of wires that hissed like fireworks in the space Ianto occupied seconds ago. Ianto gasped, choking slightly as he pulled away from Lisa’s control on his mind momentarily because of Jack’s overwhelming worry and anger coursing through his veins._

_“J-Jack...Jack!” Ianto stumbled as his captain pulled him forwards cruelly, until he was back in the Tourist Office, coughing on smoke and eyes watering as he struggled to drag himself away from Lisa’s hold on his_ hibitions _. Jack pushed him away and he fell, supported only by Toshiko’s hands holding his shoulders steady._

_Groaning, Ianto rubbed at his temples, allowed a moment of sweet reprieve before Jack hauled him towards him, pushing him against the wall with a gun to his head. “Tell me who she is and how we kill her. Because she certainly isn’t human,” Jack ordered, his tone boding no nonsense._

_Swallowing thickly and trying to gather his bearings whilst Jack’s gaze and Webley bore into him, Ianto went to speak quietly, his voice still scratchy from not using it for almost a week since Lisa had come back into his life. Seeing this, Jack loosened his grip ever so slightly, but Ianto barely registered the kind gesture._

_“H-her name is L-L-Lisa. I don’t know what she is,” Ianto lied blatantly, hoping that pain covered the tell-tale scrunching of his nose that depicted his untruthfulness. “There’s a band around her neck. It makes her powerful, I_ thi _-think.”_

_Ianto stared Jack deep into his cerulean glare and realised suddenly that he was leading his friend into certain doom. But, it didn’t matter anymore, because his friends, his teammates, his Toshiko, his Jack, his Owen were so much more important than keeping a shell of someone he got over years ago._

_“You get rid of that band, deactivate it, shoot it, anything that gets it off her neck, I promise that you’ll be safe.”_

_Jack glanced down at him, a new cruelty in his gaze. Slowly, as if he was trying to appear as unthreatening as possible, Jack pulled his Webley away from Ianto’s sweat gleaming forehead and flipped it towards the vulnerable telepath._

_“You do it. You kill her.”_


	2. Ianto Jones is actually a cat that always craves affection: CONFIRMED

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is super because something needed to happen in the flashbacks before Ianto and Owen could have their talk in the present and I didn't want too much flashback stuff to happen at once, okay, bye
> 
> Flashbacks = italics  
> Present = normal text

Ianto came to slowly.

His eyelids were like lead over his eyes, pulling harshly at a distinct furrow blemishing his forehead. Sweat ruined the smooth planes of Ianto’s slender fingers and he struggled to wipe it away on his sweatpants. Once Ianto managed to open his eyes again, the moon was shining in through Owen’s thin, white curtains.

A shifting in the next room over heightened Ianto’s senses for a moment and he straightened up suddenly, hissing slightly at the feeling of the blood running into his prickling limbs. Although everything in the room, from the tiny buzzing of the fly by the large windows and the faint smell of a woman’s perfume (probably from one of Owen’s late night escapades), was strengthened to a powerful, overwhelming awareness, Ianto didn’t pick up on the louder shuffling outside Owen’s bedroom before the door creaked open.

“Ianto?”

Tosh’s voice was soft as if she was unsure if Ianto was quite yet awake and she didn’t want the exhausted telepath to be roused. Dark circles that most definitely matched Ianto’s own marred the underneath of Clover’s pretty eyes. In her hand was a small bottle of dripping, ice cold water, paired with three pills of various sizes and colours.

“When did you wake up, lovely?” Tosh asked gently, sliding in through the ajar door and hiding the sprightly, warm, saffron glow of Owen’s large kitchen behind her. She drifted over to the bed that Ianto still rested on silently and sat tentatively as if trying not to spook a wounded animal.

Tensing, Ianto flinched away when Tosh tried to stroke comfortingly at Ianto’s bare forearm. He blinked quickly, his brain only just catching with his best friend’s movement. Despite her slightly hurt expression, Ianto knew that she had expected his not-so-new abhorrence for physical human touch.

Stretching languidly, Ianto rolled over, almost like a lazy cat, to be closer to Tosh. Although he knew he was unready for her comfort, Ianto wanted desperately to be close to her furnace-like warmth. Beaming, she handed him the pills, explaining lowly why Owen had given him each.

After he had swallowed them, Ianto lay back down again, chasing after the cosiness of the crimson, cotton sheets beneath him. Just as Tosh was about to say something, the bedroom door opened once again, revealing Owen’s lankiness.

“Is he awake?”

Tosh nodded soundlessly and Owen entered the room fully. He looked surprisingly well-rested, but Ianto could sense a heaviness to his movements as if he was poorly hiding his own fatigue. Glancing at him through his lashes, Ianto sat up (Ianto had done it so many times in the last five minutes, he felt like a hula girl on the dashboard of a car, wobbling up and down, and up and down, and up and down), answering Owen’s question as well.

“Okay, spill. I want to know everything.”

 

* * *

 

 

_Despite his mixture of fear and confusion, Ianto skulked down to the lower levels of the Hub, Jack’s Webley clenched in his fist. It would have slipped from his fingers had he not kept it so tight in his grasp. Strangely, the gun felt comfortable, almost right in his hands - Ianto was sickened by the thought of becoming so acclimatised to murder that he could do so without even flinching._

_“Owen, follow him,” Jack ordered, turning on his heel to face the rest of his team, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. His tone was authoritative, boding no challenge, but Toshiko challenged him anyways._

_“What? Surely this should be a private matter, you’re getting him to kill someone he loves,” she demanded, shouldering forwards past Gwen, who seemed all for Jack’s suggestion. Furrowing his brow, Jack glared down at the shorter tech. The woman didn’t back down; her loyalty was admirable._

_Although he was adamant about his orders, Jack seemed to struggle to find a decent reason as to why. Tosh’s gaze hardened and she was about to argue once more before Jack answered the unspoken question in a harsh, cracking, tired voice._

_“Owen is the only medical doctor here. If something goes wrong, he can help - this meaningless conversation could be stopping him getting help to Ianto-”_

_“Oh, don’t pretend that you care about Ianto! All you want is for Lisa to be dead - do you not understand what he’s going through? You’re making him murder one of his best friends,” Tosh reiterated, stepping forwards into Jack’s personal space with an aura of fierce anger radiating almost visibly from her tense frame._

_“You can’t speak to him like that, he’s your captain!” Gwen interrupted, and Tosh could have snapped her fucking neck judging from the animalistic rage twisting her pretty face into a snarl. Owen, for the first time since they’d escaped to the Tourist Office, spoke, holding Tosh by the shoulders; his hands wouldn’t have stopped her from stalking further up to Gwen, but instead offered a rock for Tosh to shelter from the storm of Jack and Gwen’s battling emotions._

_“Although I don’t condone his methods, Jack is right, Toshiko. Ianto could be hurt.”_

_Tosh glanced up at him with a suddenly very vulnerable expression. “If he’s hurt, emotionally or physically, if you have to drag him away from Lisa’s dead body, promise me that you will help him. Promise me.”_

_Owen nodded silently, before racing down to where Ianto had hidden away from the rest of the Torchwood team._


	3. Owen Harper is a Good Friend™

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took seventy-four years and my firstborn child to write and it's still shit, kay, thanks, bye
> 
> Flashbacks = italics (which is why basically all of this chapter is italic)  
> Present day = normal tex

_Racing down the stairs to the Hub, Owen felt short of breath - both because there really was too many stairs and because Ianto, his friend (which Owen promised himself he would stop saying so begrudgingly now that he could have lost the Archiver) could be lying dead in the place that was his second home._

_The stairway opened up into a short corridor - Owen toyed with the idea of risking opening the cog door, which could have been deactivated anyway (considering how much Lisa must have destroyed in the Hub, especially the electrical wirings. Eventually, Owen decided against it, choosing the longer route of a service entrance that had to be manually unlocked. When Owen finally tumbled into the lower floors, there was a murmuring filling the room, which gradually became louder and angrier._

_Electricity hung heavy in the air causing a mirage of white-blue hotness to burst behind Owen’s flickering eyelids. Creeping forwards with a hand over his head to protect himself, Owen tried to get a glimpse of Ianto and Lisa._

_As he grew closer to the still invisible pair, the mumbled conversation grew clearer, until Owen could pick out every accented vowel from Ianto’s mouth. Confused, Owen skulked closer. A pen discarded on the floor cracked loudly under his weight and Owen froze, terrified. He bit his lip so very hard that blood trickled lazily down his chin, almost unconcerned in the way it dropped to the ground._

_The pair of-of-of...Owen didn’t know what they were, not anymore. They didn’t notice, too engrossed in their anger._

_“Why must you fixate so much on these humans, Ianto? Think of what you are, think of what you could become; with me? Don’t you remember how good it felt for me to control your mind, to just let go, be free of all of the tiny responsibilities these inferiors make you do? You fetch coffee for them, but you could destroy them in a second? And the American? The way you love him? No-one wants freaks like us, Ianto. No-one but me.”_

_“That isn’t true! I fixate on them because I love them, every single one of them. Relinquishing control to you means that they are no longer safe. Either you leave and you never come back, or I kill you. And I already know which option that you will choose and I know I will hate killing the person wearing the body of my best friend,” Ianto snarled back._

_His voice held such power that Owen felt a lightning bolt of awe race down his spine, a burst of admiration for Ianto to be so loyal. Despite his previous assumption that Ianto was an innocent, powerless do-gooder, Owen knew now that he was a little more than the human they all believed him to be._

_Ianto wasn’t human. Struggling to catch a glimpse, Owen shuffled forwards from his hiding place; it left him wide open to attacks, but he assumed that the two non-humans would be too caught up in their aggressiveness to notice him._

_“I could convince you, you know that, don’t you? As strong as you are, and you really, really are, you’re vulnerable right now. It would be so very easy to take over your mind again. I could make you do anything. Blow up this secret base of yours. Hurt your friends - kill your friends, even. The one hiding behind those computers over there is being especially annoying. I might even kill him myself. Oh, you can come out now, by the way,” Lisa monologued, a slow, blasé droning that vibrated across the room to Owen’s hiding spot._

_A paralysing fear struck in Owen’s heart, like icy, liquid metal. Without hesitation, he straightened up, walking stiffly away from the desks. Tugging on the outskirts of his mind was an iron fist, and Owen figured it was Lisa controlling him, like how she had apparently controlled Ianto. The man in question seemed just as frozen as Owen._

_“You’re a simple mind to take over, Owen,” Lisa murmured thoughtfully, her onyx gaze shifting to look fully at the stock-still medic. Cocking her head, she stalked forwards slightly, a smirk playing dangerously on her dark lips._

_Moments later, her hand was raised, like a claw pointed straight at Owen. Tenebrosity misted over her long fingers, a cloud of blackness curling past every wrinkle and scar littering her palm. Owen registered suddenly that it was going to kill him - Lisa held pure power in her hand, a deadly dominance that she had mastered._

_Glowing, an overpoweringly bright darkness, the magic reached forwards, almost touching Owen but not quite. Out of the corner of his eye, Owen noticed Ianto’s legs tremble, feet twitching, battling the impulse to whirl around and sprint down the empty, shadowed corridor - fight or flight. ‘Common reaction’, Owen mused, a strange point to focus on considering his particular situation._

_Fire burned beneath his eyelids, and Owen felt unshed tears in the form of black spots swim over his vision. Terror clenched a tight fist around his heart and God, Owen couldn’t breathe, his lungs felt like they were collapsing and his fingers started quivering despite the hold Lisa had on him - a rolling, acidic sensation flamed in his stomach, rising in his throat until all he felt was a strange choking and now he really, really couldn’t breathe-_

_Fuck!_

_A deafeningly loud bang resonated through the air, shattering past Owen’s face and straight into Lisa’s forehead. Owen whipped around, just as Ianto dropped to the ground, his face twisted into that of terror; he held a pistol loosely in his shaking hand, smoking slightly. Staggering forwards, unused to movement after being forced still, Owen caught Ianto in his arms, falling to the ground along with the innocent, green telepath._

_Ianto sobbed, a wretched choking sound that clenched Owen’s heart. His tears soaked quickly through Owen’s collar and against his own sweat-drenched neck. When Owen glanced towards Lisa’s collapsed corpse, he noticed vaguely the splatter of her blood against his shoulder which probably matched the one along his cheek._

_Perfectly in between her lifeless, open eyes was a bullet hole, elongated given the angle that Ianto had shot her - Jesus, Ianto had shot her, and to save him of all people! Blood pooled on the floor beside Lisa’s head and Ianto was hyperventilating into his shirt collar. Despairing and confused, unused to comforting anyone that he truly cared about, Owen hugged Ianto closer, rocking him back and forth instinctively._

_Stiffening slightly before relaxing minutely, Ianto burrowed into Owen’s overwhelming warmth, crying quietly. “I’m so-sorry, I’m so sorr-y, I didn’t mean for you to find ou-out like this, I never wanted to h-hu-hurt you, I’m sorry, I’m re-really sorry-”_

_Ianto cut himself off when the cog door blared an ear-splitting screech, signalling the rest of the team joining them. As if he had become a completely different person, Ianto’s limbs grew rigid and his breath caught in his throat and as Owen stood to greet Jack, he cocooned himself as best he could, protectively hiding his head in between his knees._

_Tosh gasped, finally seeing Lisa’s body and Ianto curled up on the floor, opting to race over to the telepath and gather him securely in her strong arms. Almost like a fifth wheel - which Owen may or may not have revelled in, seeing as Gwen had been so damaging to Ianto - Gwen stood awkwardly, her arms crossed in an attempt to seem detached from the situation. However, Owen knew for a fact that she was incredibly interested in his current shouting match with Jack._

_“How the hell could you do that to him? Ianto does everything for us, without complaint, no matter how much any of us demean him, and yes, that really needs to stop too, but, Jesus- You made him murder one of his best friends. Someone that he loved. Have you ever felt love, Jack? And the utter fear and loss and suffering when they die right in front of you,” Owen snarled, his voice quieting as he went on, sadder now that he could picture Katie, now that he could picture himself screaming and crying as Jack held him when he lost her. Why wouldn’t he do that with Ianto?_

_“She was a danger to the team,” Jack snapped, pointing at Lisa’s sprawled body, before continuing. “Ianto understood that-”_

_“Lisa was his friend! And now she’s lying dead because of you, because you told Ianto to do it, and you know fine well that that boy will do anything for you, and you. Will. Always. Use. It. To. Your. Advantage!” Owen said angrily, punctuating each word with a sharp jab at Jack’s chest._

_The other man’s face twisted and he looked terribly pained for a second; Owen felt a sick twist of pride for making the captain feel so terrible before he noticed Jack’s slightly reddened eyes. He softened minutely, his face still a stony facade, but pity in his gaze. Hoping desperately for Jack to finally make the right decision and help Ianto, Owen stood back out of the other man’s space._

_“Ianto’s on grievance leave, three weeks. I hope I can trust you to take care of him.” Jack emphasised the word ‘grievance’, and he really was very close to saying sorry (‘For the first time in his life,’ Owen thought bitterly) but it wasn’t enough._

_“What, so he can come back? Jack, that isn’t fair, he almost killed all of us! He’s a danger to the team, I won’t let him come back,” Gwen shouted, marching forwards with that Look on her face - the one that screamed ‘I’m-Gwen-Cooper-and-you-should-treat-my-word-as-gospel-because-I-have-a-boyfriend-and-a-conscious-blah-blah-blah’._

_Owen could have killed her right then and there, an inexplicably large amount of rage building up inside of him._

_Jack beat him to it. “Gwen, this is not up for discussion. Ianto wasn’t in control, he is innocent in all of this. Maybe you should go home and think about who you really should be loyal to. I think both of us need to rethink that.”_

_Owen nodded, satisfied. Then, he turned back to Ianto, who Toshiko had helped gradually to gain his footing; his eyes were raw from crying, and there was an air about him, something old and powerful and wise and so very, very sad. Wondering vaguely why he had never realised it before, Owen walked forward, supporting Ianto with a guiding hand on his elbow. Once Ianto had recovered, Owen was sure that they would be having a talk about whatever the hell he was._

 

* * *

“We call ourselves the Gifted.”

“Is that it?” Owen replied, folding his arms in an attempt to seem more menacing, pressure Ianto into revealing more, maybe. He knew it wouldn’t work, but he revelled in the tiny smile he got for his efforts - Ianto really was on the mend.

“No. That’s barely the beginning.”


End file.
